


Once

by phrenitis



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 22:08:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phrenitis/pseuds/phrenitis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These things she knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Season Two, _Asterisk_
> 
> One way "the other time" happened.

_“Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. French. Pascal. The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing.”  
\-- Madeleine L'Engle, ‘A Wrinkle in Time’_

==

These things she knows –

\- the name of every legal secretary to every senior partner at the 11 best-ranked law firms in the city.

\- his Sunday morning jog route and the corner café with the blue-grey stucco where she can wait if he is running late.

\- the bank account where she deposits his vacation day payouts.

\- her strengths, her weaknesses, and her five-year plan.

\- everything.

==

A natural curiosity is there, of course - a question that rises up on late nights, or after successfully closed cases, or when he reaches for her wrist - a brief thought. She attributes most of it to age and circumstance, their years together intimate in length. The rest is knowledge, for better or worse.

She knows he wonders - the moment found in a long glance, a quick comment, a spark that flashes unexpectedly in a casual touch. It's not about change, not about needs or wants, and most decidedly not about a relationship.

It's simply about _more_.

==

“It won’t change anything,” she says to him when the elevator doors close, his touch light on the back of her arm. It’s Harvey-speak, and for once she means it wholeheartedly.

She lies.

==

The key sticks in the lock and she has to turn it twice before it catches, the door silently swinging wide as his hand plays in her hair, fingers tracing the long angle of her neck.

There is no pretense, no awkwardness in his touch - just certainty, a stark truth and an inevitability that she wants to remember. She turns to him, kisses him in the arch of the door’s frame as they fold together, curves and lines and heat. His hands press firmly at her lower back, pulling her tight to him, and she feels him getting hard as she runs her tongue along his.

It’s not a rushed affair, no clothes strewn in a bread crumb path from her door to the bed – because it’s just the once, and it doesn’t change anything, this one moment theirs and indefinite until it’s not.

His hands are deft, exploration slow and thoughtful, his fingers finding patterns and drawing paths. It leaves her body afire, and he smiles at the way she moves beneath him – curving and reaching.

She follows the lines of his muscles, taut and smooth under her as she nips at his earlobe and his hands clench on her arms, her name coming from him rough and raw. And when she slides on to him, takes him in slow and sure, he holds her hips, draws her down for a kiss that reminds her just vaguely of love.

She comes on the edge of an inhale and lets the feeling roll through her body, doesn’t breathe.

==

He doesn’t stay long and she doesn’t kiss him goodbye - nothing uncomfortable or committed, no meaning – just the simple, quiet end of a pause.

==

The pile of file boxes stack higher than the couch and she skirts the edge to rifle through the cases in reach. Despite the appearance, it's far from a disaster, and she finds the file, as she expects, in seconds.

Harvey looks up when she puts it on the desk, his expression thoughtful. "The jury will have to be sequestered."

"And you've known that," she points out. "You think it's Baker?"

"I _know_ it's Baker." He points down to the file she located.

She nods, that guy had been a weasel since their time with the DA. "What are you going to do?"

He stands and squeezes past her in the narrow space – the press of his body a sudden reminder – stops at the door to button his jacket and tilt his head in that cocky way she knows well. “Win.”

==

In the end, it’s easy.

It’s just a one-sided affair – her emotions versus her thoughts, him versus her, wishes versus reality - and she’s a choices type of person.

==

These things she knows –

\- he’s a hands _and_ tongue kind of guy, and, well…

\- the bruises on her hips, the faint blue and yellow pattern from the press of his fingers.

\- his appendectomy scar, smooth and white, a thin line barely visible.

\- and counting.

==

“Because you can never go back,” she tells Rachel when she really means _forget_.

==

He stands by her desk, waiting.

She doesn’t bother to glance up. “You will have it in five.”

“Donna.”

“Unless that’s followed by ‘ _you were right_ ’, I will have this to you in _five_.” She looks up then, pointedly, and watches while he changes his mind about saying whatever he’d been thinking – and she has a pretty good idea what - then turns back toward his office.

She waits until he’s sitting at his desk before following and setting the case files down in front of him. “As requested.”

“Wait,” he says, putting the pieces together. “It was already finished?”

She points at herself. “Awesome.”

“I only changed my mind about this a half an hour ago.”

She smiles at the disbelief in his voice. “I would really hate to use the same descriptor for myself twice.”

He lets that sink in, raises an eyebrow. “And five minutes?”

She puts her hands on her hips. “Distracting with impatience is _my_ specialty.”

==

“The feelings go away,” she says, remembering backwards - the time and distance long now. “Eventually.”

She’s honest about that at least.

==

These things she knows –

\- the other time, she says.

She stops there.

 

- _Fin_


End file.
